NASA RESUMES COOPERATION WITH ISRO AFTER ASAT TEST - NASA suspended cooperation with its Indian counterpart in one area in the immediate aftermath of India’s March 27 anti-satellite test, only to reinstate it less than a week later. In a March 29 letter to K. Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Al Condes, NASA associate administrator for international and interagency relations, said that NASA was suspending its participation in a working group between the two agencies related to human spaceflight issues, two days after India announced it had intercepted one of its satellites with a ground-launched missile. “It is NASA’s view that human spaceflight is simply incompatible with the purposeful creation of orbital debris generated by anti-satellite testing,” Condes wrote in the letter, provided to SpaceNews by NASA. More (Source: SpaceNews - Apr 8)
RELATIVITY SIGNS CONTRACT WITH TELESAT FOR LAUNCHING LEO CONSTELLATION - Small launch vehicle developer Relativity announced April 5 a contract with Telesat to launch a portion of that company’s low Earth orbit broadband satellite constellation. The contract covers the launch of an unspecified number of Telesat LEO satellites on Relativity’s Terran 1 launch vehicle, starting no earlier than 2021. The companies declined to disclose the terms of the contract. In an interview, Tim Ellis, chief executive of Relativity, said the contract is the first customer for the Terran 1 that the company has announced. He said Relativity previously signed a contract with another customer that has yet to be announced. More (Source: SpaceNews - Apr 7)
MISSILE TEST DEBRIS SHOULD DISSOLVE IN 45 DAYS: DEFENCE RESEARCH CHIEF - Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) Chairman G Satheesh Reddy said today that there was no possibility of debris from the anti-satellite (ASAT) test conducted by India on March 27 hitting the International Space Station (ISS). He said there were chances of some debris going up but since 10 days have passed since the launch, there was no possibility of it posing any threat to the ISS. The risk analysis simulation based on an internationally accepted software also showed that there was no threat to the space station. The DRDO chief said that all the debris should be dissolved within 45 days. More (Source: NDTV - Apr 7)
WHAT INDIA’S ANTI-SATELLITE TEST MEANS FOR SPACE DEBRIS - Last week, India conducted a successful test of its new Anti-Satellite (ASAT) missile system. This makes India the fourth nation to possess — and test — anti-satellite capability, behind the U.S., Russia and China. “India has made an unprecedented achievement today,” said Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in statement shortly after the successful test. “India registered its name as a space power. More (Source: Sky and Telescope - Apr 6)
ARE REPROGRAMMABLE SATELLITES READY FOR PRIME TIME? - A new generation of satellites is coming to the launch pad, and they are promising a tectonic shift in satellite operations. Where satellites once were tailored to a single mission and effectively locked into their role upon launch, several manufacturers are moving to embrace this vision of a satellite with functions that can be reprogrammed, a spacecraft that can take new applications on board in order to expand its range of performance. More (Source: C4ISRNet - Apr 6)
AMAZON WILL LAUNCH THOUSANDS OF SATELLITES TO PROVIDE INTERNET AROUND THE WORLD - Amazon plans to launch a constellation of 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit in order to provide internet to “unserved and underserved communities around the world.” The so-called Project Kuiper initiative first came to light after GeekWire spotted that Kuiper Systems LLC recently made three sets of filings with the ITU, the international organization in charge of coordinating satellite orbits. Amazon confirmed that Kuiper Systems is one of its projects. Amazon is the latest in a string of companies with plans to use a network of thousands of satellites to offer broadband around the world. More (Source: The Verge - Apr 5)
SOYUZ LAUNCH DEPLOYS LAST OF O3B’S FIRST-GENERATION BROADBAND SATELLITES - The launch of a Soyuz rocket from French Guiana with four more satellites Thursday to join SES’s O3b broadband network will help satisfy growing bandwidth demands in Latin America, Africa and the Pacific islands until the deployment of a new generation of upgraded spacecraft in 2021, SES officials said. The quartet of broadband satellites lifted off from the Guiana Space Center on the northeastern shore of South America at 1703:37 GMT (1:03:37 p.m. EDT; 2:03:37 p.m. French Guiana time) Thursday aboard a Soyuz ST-B rocket after a 33-minute delay to allow extra time to conduct final checks on ground systems at the tropical spaceport. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 5)
PROGRESS CARGO FREIGHTER DOCKS WITH SPACE STATION AFTER FAST-TRACK RENDEZVOUS - A Russian Progress resupply and refueling freighter launched Thursday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan on top of a Soyuz booster. The cargo craft completed the fastest rendezvous in the history of the International Space Station program with a successful docking less than three-and-a-half hours later. The Progress MS-11 supply ship delivered more than 3.7 tons (3.4 metric tons) of propellant, food, hardware, water and breathing air for the space station and its six-person crew, according to a cargo manifest provided by NASA. More (Source: SpaceFlight Now - Apr 5)
BUSY WEEK ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION - Look again at that space station. That's there. That's home for a crew of six astronauts. That's us, too. On board, astronauts perform science and maintain the spacecraft with the support of a whole team on Earth. This week ESA is highlighting the role of the European teams that make a space mission possible – from preparations to launch, from continuous research to testing new equipment. More (Source: Phys.org - Apr 4)
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